China is integrating multiple cities into megacity regions. China has deployed regional integration plans in 2019. They are accelerating integration of the YRD (Yangtze River Delta – Shanghai area) region, Greater Bay Area (Around Hong Kong and Guangdong), or Jing-Jin-Ji (Beijing-Tianjin) region, are seen as a solution to this problem.
To integrate the YRD region, on December 1, 2019, the State Council rolled out the Master Plan for Integrated Regional Development of Yangtze River Delta, aiming to achieve urban-rural integration within the region and integrated development of high-tech industries, infrastructure, the ecological environment, and public services by 2025. The integration project requires coordination among local governments, who are often engaged in a competitive relationship to showcase higher economic development. President Xi urged that local governments make efforts to break administrative barriers, enhance policy coordination, and enable the easier flow of production factors (smooth flow of land, labor, capital, technology, and data) within the YRD region.
They are integrating the identification systems. Each city in China has their own ID cards. There are now common ID cards for each region. They are fully integrating the tax and other government services.
They are building out the high speed rail, highways and other transportation services.
Under the 2019 plans, substantial progress will be made in boosting the integrated development of the delta region by 2025, including fostering a number of world-class industrial clusters and becoming a key national innovation hub. By 2035, the area would become the most influential and dynamic growth pole of the economy.
The delta region encompasses Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui, covering around 358,000 square kilometers and generating about one-quarter of the country’s GDP.
City defined from Roman times means an area that can be traversed in one hour. High speed rail, boring tunnels, boring loops, roads with all self driving cars would be able to connect areas 150-250 miles across in one hour.
Last December, the Master Plan for YRD integration proposed to build a “digital YRD region” with the coordinated generation of new information infrastructure. Shanghai’s digital economy now accounts for more than 50 percent of its GDP, while Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces account for more than 40 percent. Shanghai is ramping up the construction of 5G network and data centers. On February 10, Shanghai released the Opinions on Further Accelerating the Construction of Smart Cities by 2022.
A new 163-km high speed railway track designed for a speed of 350 km per hour will open a new route connecting Shanghai with neighboring cities in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. It is the latest project to facilitate regional integration in the country. It is being built with an investment of 38 billion yuan (5.3 billion U.S. dollars). It will have seven stations and is expected to serve as a new transportation artery in the city cluster. Construction also began on another intercity railway linking Yangzhou City in Jiangsu Province with Ma’anshan in Anhui Province in the Yangtze River Delta region. Construction of 76 large infrastructure connectivity projects including railways, expressways, airports, waterways and ports has started so far this year in the region, with total outlay exceeding 1 trillion yuan.
More high-speed railways will establish an inter-city transport circle, connecting cities half an hour to three hours away. Railway development in the region has a planned investment of 87.03 billion yuan ($12.28 billion) to put more than 1,000 km of new railways into operation by the end of 2020.
SOURCES- Xinhua, Wikipedia, China Briefing
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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250 million people in one city?
It's a great idea . . . providing they put it on some remote and inhospitable planet or moon that no one wants to visit, anyway.
Yes, this is best if you're a totalitarian dictatorship that loves to rob people of their rights and squash their souls. Putting the masses together in large groups make them much easier to control and monitor, I can see this going quite right for China's rule over the people. RedPopsicle, time to break out your ChiCom pompoms – your masters are doing a great job in meeting their goals of total rule.
This looks like a beautiful setting for a Big Brother/Blade Runner dystopian paradise. Go China!
The Chinese engineered Covid, and when it got loose from that lab in Wuhan, they shutdown all internal flights but kept open all international flights out of China. That should tell us everything about the CCP, right ‘red popsicko?’
Should we call this, “Useful Progress???” China and India are using so much GD concrete – even American Academics (losers) fear they are throwing the earth off it’s access…
Concerns: the usual combination of complexity, density and human nature. It's amazing sometimes that cities work at all, so they might be able to pull it off without more than an occasional catastrophe. Good project for urban designers, and having an authoritarian state should help.
City based data is harder to find. For Mumbai its 1.4 [1]. Another example is Delhi city which is also a state with tfr of 1.5. State wise breakdown of tfr will show the same thing. [2] The more urbanized the lower tfr.
[1] https://www.hindustantimes.com/mumbai-news/fertility-rate-down-to-1-4-in-2011-from-2-5-in-1993/story-bgMRqmjOyMEkbhfXSUN0ZI.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_union_territories_of_India_by_fertility_rate
Can you point to some data for the fertility rate for the cities? I can only find nation wide figures in the brief search I did.
Nation wide figures are useless with much of the population still rural.
It's getting clearer where the global leadership is going to reside in the next century. West will look on, dismiss and finally follow.
What could go right? A lot!
"Jamming people into densely populated urban areas seem to suppress fertility rate."
Two words for you: Mumbai and Manila.
It's a reasonable yardstick and true for most large cities across centuries.
That wont happen any time soon, the three gorges dam will make sure of it
What is TFR of 250 million person city? Jamming people into densely populated urban areas seem to suppress fertility rate. Accumulation of wealth at the cost of human resource is not sustainable–drawing down one resource to build up another. This is happening all over the developed world. China would be better off creating human-scaled and community-centered towns than mega-cities.
Yes, it is impressive that we managed to make a whole new class of vaccine and have it work, but this has no bearing on Jean Baptiste's point that we could have simply rushed something out. In 57, that's exactly what they did.
Yeah, we really didn't do that sort of high effort social mobilization. I don't think we're institutionally competent enough really.
Wow, way off the mark. We've had a lot more experience with Coronaviruses, and their potential vaccines, then we had with HIV during its public emergence, and the public health effect for this virus is obviously more similar to the 57 and 68 pandemics.
At the time, those were all new strains causing mass epidemics with million+ casualties. And the influenza vaccine pipeline was not such settled science in 1957 – it wasn't until 1947 that they even realized antigenic drift was a problem, and wasn't until 1960 that yearly shots were recommended.
It is true that they had experience with inactivated virus vaccines by then though. That's also true today, and the process of making an inactivated coronavirus is not noticeably different. There are groups testing inactivated COVID-19 vaccines as we speak. That may or may not turn out to have good efficacy, meaning that the scientists at the beginning of the 57 pandemic were basically in the same boat as we were at the beginning of this one.
Probably the main difference is that they weren't as familiar with, and liable for, the things that can go wrong with inactivated virus vaccines. And they didn't really have other approaches yet either. When your only protocol is a hammer, you get on and whack things with it.
Wasn't more of the money being thrown at the Greater Bay Area project, as they are trying to turn it into the equivalent of California, with a silicon valley clone core with surrounding high tech industries?
Basically they are trying to create a high concentration of talent, and theoretically replicating the high probability of serendipity in such an environment. But that requires both unfettered access to smart capital, ease of business start, and unrestricted employee mobility, plus a relatively hands off regulatory approach, and a pleasant living environment/climate. For all those conditions, it seems like close but no cigar.
Just read a long description of asteroid threat, with warning that we should colonize Moon then Mars to spread out and save ourselves. No clue.
I was ready to start in 1977. Don't blame me!
Well, you have not heard the sermon! I was opposed to the ISS in favor of a visitable lunar experimental set up, as O'Neill proposed. Now, the ISS has been useful, but I wanted rotation as an early step, rather than 0 g living for years in prep for Mars trip as the main focus. If any ISS at all. Robot mass driver first priority, get O, glass and metal. Launch was way expensive then. O'Neill is about Space v planet surface, not rotating only, in fact, the NON rotating 0 g industry is a main selling point of O'Neill! So, I have abandoned my 4 decades of "Moon before Mars" and shifted to "Not the Moon, except for science and resource exploitation." Space is the place. Without a good reason, there is no practical reason to be on the Moon rather than in Space, where g is avail if needed. What is your goal?
What could possibly go wrong?
Really? Going to want a cite on that one. It certainly isn't the current definition anywhere that my duckduck can find.
Easier in terms of what is physically possible given a century of tech development. Not easier in terms of doing a project in the next 5 years to give 5 million people somewhere to live.
Those are very different things, and this article is about the second.
Since when have we listened to the Soviets?
Flu vaccines are not a good comparison. Flu vaccines are prepared every year, there is already an existing technology and pipeline. Completely different from developing a new tech for a new disease.
Compare it to the AIDS vaccine if you want a useless comparison to a different sort of disease.
I agree with your statements overall, but would correct the ones that imply having hundreds of times the Earth's area to live in would be less. While *saving* the Earth too. That is the Bezos/O'Neill project, starting with Space Solar.
Such safety zones would quickly be labeled "Camps" with a strong implication of "prison camp" for "those who know what is REALLY going on, once the sheeple have accepted and forgotten about them".
See also Canada: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/covid-internment-camps-debunked_ca_5f909f23c5b695a32fb0023b
As per the known metrics, and Chinese reported numbers. Seriously, does anybody actually trust numbers out of China? On anything at all?
Its all about how you treat and offer opportunity to your weakest individuals. Do you insist that they cower, flee, and isolate at the cost of all others' 'economic vitality'? Do you insist that they remain in high density urban 'death zones' so as to be close to vital, but possibly overwhelmed, health services? Do you make them choose between family&support and isolation&segregation? We need to fundamentally design a 'pandemic escape' plan that provides high quality services in zones of easy protection while allowing low risk individuals to continue to function and prosper. If you can evacuate 75% of New Orleans in 36 hours, they can definitely create safety zones that reduce urban 'disease congestion', spare vacation communities from urban-escapee influx, and re-distribute health resources to zones of high need. The UK already has augmented covid overflow and 'triage'-type procedures for re-routing from overwhelmed ICUs. Its all about planning – though population compliance/ sophistication will be key.
You're preaching to the choir.
Most people around here support expansion into space, and places like the Moon will be among the first ones visited, quite before we have rotating habitats.
because the quality of life, unique experiences, and availability of all type of products and services would be less, at a greater cost and for questionable increase in new experience/ knowledge, in even the most luxurious community-space-cylinders. Humans deserve better than to live in floating 'gated community' coke cans unless it is on the way to a truly unique experience that is truly the goal of every one of its occupants. Every generation deserves to have more stuff, greater experiences, and more access to knowledge and opportunity than the generation before it — as the fundamental judgment of success for a civilization is each generation's contribution to societal post-scarcity – the ultimate embodiment of a well-designed civilization manifesting itself.
The 1968 Hong Kong Flu had a vaccine out in 4 months. The 1957 Asian Flu was similar – the US started work on vaccine in May (before it even hit our shores in June) and had a vaccine by August. Of course, that was just for the first doses. Mass distribution took some more time.
Back then, testing requirements were significantly lighter, and what a difference it made. Probably didn't have to prove efficacy at all, they just did something that made sense and checked for safety.
I've been pondering the word "Space" and realize that most people think of planets or such instead! That is not what I mean. It is easier in Space, not on other planets.
You have a point. They'll make the diseace and let the rest of the world do the dying. But Bret is right, new pandemics will be coming hard and fast.
The Soviet Union says WRONG!
They do, but in general, China has had a slow, long term view of space.
A vision they have been surprisingly consistent in upholding, though. Contrarily to the periodical changes of leadership and results at NASA.
So if they say they will have people on the Moon by certain date, better believe them.
And let's recall they are the only ones that have had successful landings on the moon since the Apollo missions.
I watched a 4 story mixed project get built as I walked to work. Far easier to start from scratch in Space.
Well, they DO have rockets!
If China really put its mind to colonizing space, they'd have a warp drive inside of two years. I say, with my rose-colored glasses lol.
As per the known metrics, they did better than the Western world on the last pandemic.
But I don't believe 2020's lockdowns and social/physical distance are the answer anyway.
We need better medicine and get out the big guns of biotech and nanotech against the viruses.
It irks me that some vaccines were ready literally days after the virus genome was known, but they have been in the approval pipeline for a whole year, while millions got sick and died.
And yes, I'm aware that a 1 year approval process is incredibly fast for the usual standards of vaccines.
Because the transportation system they are building works horizontally not vertically.
Why not Space?
That should do wonders for rapid disease propagation.